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"ThereÕs a tension in my work between anger and sentimentality, ideology and form and the difficulty of articulating the experiences of a marginalized group, with its particularities and minutiae, for a mainstream audience. When I first began making films, I felt my greatest stylistic challenge was dealing with the uneven baseline of cultural reference points between Asian and non-Asian viewers. How does one disrupt the center, and realign the notion of universality?" The films of Renˇe Tajima-Pe–a rest on the assumption that memory is malleable and truth fluid. A gifted storyteller with an activistÕs mind and a wonderful sense of humor, she turns conventions of American entertainmentŃthe murder story, the family reunion, the road tripŃinto lapidary, multi-textual, primarily feature length works that amalgamate fiction and documentary traditions. Whether she is on the trail of scandal and intrigue, following her husband and brother-in-law back to their family home to El Valle, the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, combining individual narrative with social analysis in the portrait of a Vietnamese meatpacker in Kansas City, or moving between parody and lamentation taking contemporary skateboard culture to Manzanar, the World War II internment camp for Japanese-Americans, Tajima-Pe–a thickens political discourse by means of the personal story. And thatÕs a story filled not only by emotion, dreams, and memory but by the imprint of culture be it war, race, economic exploitation or sexual inequality. |
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Born 1958, Chicago Lives in Los Angeles 1980 B.A., Harvard-Radcliffe College, Cum Laude in East Asian Studies and Sociology |
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| 2004 | Rosa’s Boys (working title), work-in-progress | |
| 2004 | My Journey Home, produced and directed with Lourdes Portillo | |
| 2003 | Mexico City in The New Americans | |
| 2002 | Labor Women | |
| 2001 | Skate Manzanar, for the multi-media collaboration “Amnesia” | |
| 1997 | The Last Beat Movie | |
| 1997 | My America...or Honk if You Love Buddha | |
| 1993 | Audio installation combining the quotations of Chairman Mao Tse Tung and the music of James Brown, performed by Jessica Hagedorn and Laurie Carlos, for Shu Lea Cheang’s Those Fluttering Objects of Desire | |
| 1988 | Who Killed Vincent Chin?, produced and directed with Chris Choy | |
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| 2001 | Soros Documentary Fund | |
| 1999 | Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance Award | |
| 1991 | DuPont–Columbia University Award, Silver Baton | |
| 1990, 94 | Rockefeller Foundation Intercultural Film/Video Fellow in Documentary | |
| 1990 | Peabody Award | |
| 1989 | Academy Award® nomination for Best Feature Documentary | |
| 1988 | International Documentary Association Achievement Award | |
| 1987, 94 | New York Foundation for the Arts, Fellow in Film | |
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| 2003 | Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival | |
| 2002 | Bellevue Art Museum | |
| 2001 | Locarno Film Festival, Switzerland | |
| 1999 | Dortmund Women’s Film Festival, Germany | |
| 1998 | Athens International Film & Video Festival, Best Overall Documentary Award | |
| 1998 | New York Museum of Modern Art | |
| 1997 | Sundance Film Festival | |
| 1997 | Wexner Center for the Arts | |
| 1989, 93 | Whitney Museum of Art Biennial Exhibition | |
| 1989 | Cannes Film Festival, France | |
| 1989 | London International Film Festival | |
| 1989 | Mannheim International Film Festival, Ducat Priz, Germany | |
| 1988 | Hawaii International Film, Festival Best Documentary | |
| 1988 | New Directors/New Films, Opening Night Film | |
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| www.reneetajimapena.com |